What Did They Do As They Sat Around The Table? - Thoughts On The Lectionary

I am not (at present at least) a lectionary based preacher. I have been at times in the past; I probably will be again one day. But right now, I am not a lectionary based preacher. I do not, however, ignore the lectionary. Since most commentary websites are lectionary-based, and I like consulting them as I prepare messages, I constantly check a lectionary Scripture index. And, I usually look at the lectionary passages for the current week, mostly out of curiosity. And when I do, I find something like this (which came up this week): Genesis 15:1-12,17-18. And I wonder, what's in 13-16? And for that matter 19-21 - since the reading doesn't even end at the end of a sentence! So I looked this up. If one strictly adheres to the lectionary, one reads the following:

After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.” But Abram said, “O Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?” And Abram said, “You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.”Then the word of the Lord came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir.” He took him outside and said, “Look up at the heavens and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness. He also said to him, “I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it.” But Abram said, “O Sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?” So the Lord said to him, “Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.” Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half. Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away. As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. ... When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates ..."

What a nice reading. God makes a wonderful covenant with Abram. He will have descendants. Many descendants. And they will have land. Wonderful. But pay attention to (...) in the above. Because that's what's been cut out.

First:

Then the Lord said to him, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. You, however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.”

Apparently we're not supposed to hear that Abram's descendants are going to have troubles.

And, at the end:

 ... the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites,  Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.

So, apparently we're also not supposed to hear that the land Abram's descendants would receive actually belongs to someone else.

It all makes me wonder - as they sat around the table, those who prepared the lectionary seem to have actually said "oh, now, we can't include these verses. They're not as sweet as the rest so we'll just mangle this passage so that it doesn't offend any delicate ears." Why did those who write the lectionary have such a low opinion of we who might preach it or of those who might hear it preached? Are our ears really too delicate to handle the tough parts of a Scripture reading? Are we just supposed to promote a feel-good, airy-fairy faith, where God just snuggles his people real close in a gigantic, divine, cosmic bear-hug? And, if so, how does that prepare God's people for the real world, where bad things happen to us, and where sometimes we even do the bad things to others? Well, it doesn't.

This reading in this week's lectionary from Genesis helped to remind me why I'm not a lectionary-based preacher any more. For now, anyway. And, if I was, I'd sneer at those who put this together, and I'd read the whole chapter, and not the sanitized version of it. I'd read the one that's challenging and forces us to think about God and about ourselves and about our neighbours, and not just the one that's intended to give us the warm fuzzies!

My advice to preachers? To paraphrase someone we've all heard of, "the lectionary was made for us; we were not made for the lectionary." Use it to the extent that it's helpful to you and your people. But don't use it in a way that it presents a completely false picture of Scripture and faith, which is apparently how its authors hoped it would be used.